The company has recently acquired a handful of iPhone developers and one studio, Area/Code, which has built so-called real-world games that take place beyond any tech giant's walled garden. The hope is that these firms will help give Zynga access to markets outside Facebook's reach

The dot –com crash presented new challenges as well as new opportunities to e-business entrepreneurs to rethink and reshape their business strategy and orientation. The research will be of great interest because it will evaluate the internal environment of two different innovative online industries which are the online gambling and the social networks. The gap that has been identified and will be carried out through this research, concerns whether it is feasible and possible for social networks to adopt platforms with real money and what the consequences will be to the online gambling industry

Online gambling operator bwin.party digital entertainment has signed a deal with sports marketing agency SportFive International that will enable punters to watch live streams of upcoming 2014 FIFA World Cup qualifiers for free at its bwin.com domain.

Part of bwin.com’s digital sponsorship strategy, which is focused on engaging with sports fans directly by offering premium content closely integrated into online, mobile and social media platforms, Qualifiers 2014: Road To Brazil will see a total of 157 games from the European groups streamed. The package also includes extensive in-stadia branding, customer ticket offers and the integration of bwin.com’s platform into a range of social media channels including Facebook and Twitter.

In other news, following Chancellor George Osborne's budget announcement last month to introduce a point of consumption tax for remote online gambling operators, the UK government has said that they would be ‘grateful' for any comments on the policy design and the potential impact of proposed legislation.

At present states such as New Jersey are passing or debating laws that could see online gambling become legal in certain cities or areas. At the same time the popularity of social gaming versions of gambling games is rising dramatically.

Recent crossovers between social gaming and gambling include the purchase of Playtika by Caesar’s Entertainment and Double Down Interactive by International Game Technology. However, it is Zynga, after announcing at the beginning of the year that they are looking for partnerships in the gambling area, who really are at the forefront of the gambling-gaming crossover.

As online gambling legislation looks set to change in America, and social gaming continues to grow in popularity, the line between gambling and gaming is set to become less and less distinct. Whatever path Zynga chooses their growth is almost guaranteed. They are certain to enter the real money gambling market sooner rather than later and it wouldn’t be surprising if within a year players are able to enjoy a real money version of Zynga poker.

Zynga is a very innovative company in its sector so the best move for Zynga is to find other solution to be more profitable! I think that huge poker sites like PokerStars etc are the main player in the market and is difficult to compete them!!

British bookmaker William Hill PLC has shut down its online sports wagering business in Australia, likely to protect its pending application for a Nevada Gaming license.

The London-based company was unavailable for comment Monday, but in an email to customers reported by Australia's Sports Book Review, William Hill said "please be advised that we have taken the decision to withdraw our sports betting service for any customer registered in Australia" and asked its Australian customers to request account withdrawals from the cashier through the "My Account" section of the website.

The gaming company spent more than $53 million in 2011 to acquire American Wagering Inc., parent of Leroy's Horse & Sports Place, Brandywine Bookmaking LLC, parent of Lucky's sports books, both in Las Vegas, and also Club Cal Neva Satellite Race and Sports book division in Northern Nevada..

PokerNews.comZynga, bwin.party Partner for Real Money UK OfferingPoker News DailyZynga players in the UK who wish to test their skills at real money poker will sit at the same tables as players on bwin.party's poker network, which includes...

Zynga players in the UK who wish to test their skills at real money poker will sit at the same tables as players on bwin.party’s poker network, which includes Party poker, EmpirePoker, WPTPoker, GamebookersPoker, and DanskeSpil. This will be a boon for the network, which currently sits as the second most trafficked family of online poker rooms with a seven day average of 2,700 cash game players, according to PokerScout.com.

Earlier this month, the New York Post reported that Facebook game developer Zynga (ZNGA) was in talks with Wynn Resorts (WYNN) about a joint venture in the prospective US online gambling industry. The news did not appear to move the stock; ZNGA, in fact, fell 2% in that day’s trading, to $12.22 per share.

Over the last two-plus weeks, Zynga’s fall has accelerated; it closed Friday at $9.22. The reasons for the fall are difficult to parse; a secondary offering in late March, where shareholders sold an additional $515 million worth of shares into the market increased the stock’s “float” and may have helped push the stock down. But with a young (the company only went public in December) and speculative (Zynga is not yet profitable) stock, the drivers of even large movements like the current one-month, 33% drop can be difficult to tease out.

Without the potential for real-money house games, Zynga is left with online poker, with a initial eye to the prospective US market. From there, all Zynga needs to become an online gambling powerhouse is to see poker legalization move at a faster pace than it has, or anyone thinks it will; completely overhaul its brand image and market to a demographic that has essentially no interest in its legacy games; complete a massive upgrade of its technical capabilities; and then outsmart competitors who have decades more experience in the gambling industry and partners who have already succeeded in the cutthroat European iGaming market

When you think of social gaming, the first image that probably comes to mind is that of middle-aged women playing FarmVille. Maybe your aunt is constantly sending you requests to help her grow corn or raise livestock. Or perhaps she’s an early adopter and has already moved on to Ruby Blast Adventures or Bubble Safari Ocean.

All across the Web, though, people are joining forces to create real change through social gaming. Whether they’re jumping on board with games that focus solely on doing good or they’re sticking with the old-school games that now integrate social good elements.

The Chairman for the UK’s Gambling Commission has revealed that the watchdog has no intention of widening its regulatory scope to include social games but wants the industry to do a better job at self-regulation.

“If there are minimal risks to the public or those risks are being properly managed and mitigated either by responsible providers and users or by existing mechanisms, for example the OFT or Ofcom, then there will be no need for us to act. “Conversely, if social gambling and use of social media appears to increase the risks of problem gambling or consumer exploitation, then it needed to work with fellow regulators and government to mitigate them.''

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg addressed its 3rd quarter earnings and talked about the mobile experience and its platform strategy.

Vasileios Volikakis's insight:

With respect to the platform, Facebook is going to spend the next 5-10 years focused on getting people to interact more with the company. There are more and more applications already tied into the social network. Zuckerberg says that 8-10 of the top iOS apps already integrate with Facebook and eventually, the best product in every category will be social — we’re already seeing it with media and games

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MBA Mondays: Revenue Models - Gaming Business Insider In app upgrades is certainly one of the more important revenue models.

Vasileios Volikakis's insight:

Gaming is interesting because there are a number of revenue options that game developers can choose from when thinking about how to make money from their game. The revenue model that is mostly (but not totally) unique to gaming is virtual goods. Virtual goods (like a tractor in Farmville) allow the player to have more capability in the game and they can be earned over time but are often purchased to enhance game play. This revenue model was inititally created in the asian gaming market but has been adopted by game developers all over the world.

The DeanBeat: King overtakes Zynga as the largest social gaming company VentureBeat “King now has more than 66 million daily players of our games, and in Candy Crush Saga, we have a global hit on Facebook and on mobile,” said Riccardo Zacconi, the...

Zynga has had a long run as the king of social games as it jumped on the platform as soon as Facebook opened itself up to third-party applications in May 2007. There are a lot of metrics where Zynga is still No. 1 in social games, such as revenues. But King is on the march. It will have to defend its ground and extend its lead, or the King era may be very short.During the past year, as King was on the rise, Zynga was hurting. It missed its earnings targets as Facebook’s growth slowed. The company lost money for a couple of quarters, and it has had to retrench.

Despite Zynga's fall, plenty of investors and game developers are still writing checks and apps.

SUMMARY: Despite the troubles surrounding Zynga -- its stock down 75% since the initial public offering -- the social-gaming market continues to attract investment capital and development for the mobile platform, writes Jessica Leber. Gree, for example, is among the companies creating specialized social networks for smartphone games, and even Zynga is trying to disassociate itself from Facebook to increase game discovery.

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Vasileios Volikakis's insight:

Some could argue that Zynga simply did the same, but Pincus and his company have also built up a sense of distrust over the past few years, something that needs to be changed if they want to give companies like Electronic Arts and Activision a run for their money, and more importantly, if they want to keep players from looking for new virtual fields to harvest.

When will the floodgates open? It feels like an eternity that the casino industry and makers of games like Zynga Poker have been waiting for states to flip a legal switch that will let them turn virtual gaming into real gambling.

The legal logjam could finally break in coming months as some states prepare to turn on the taps for new forms of gambling based on social media.

Nevada has already passed a law and New Jersey is likely to follow soon, according to Pillsbury lawyer Jim Gatto. He adds that Hawaii and California are also considering bills to legalize online gambling.

But a whole nation of Facebook-based gamblers is still a long ways off. Parents may not like the idea of a casino in their teenager’s room, and places like Utah have already passed laws making it illegal to place or receive a bet in the state. Gatto adds that, in California, the legal process is “incredibly fraught” due to competing interests of casinos and Indian tribes.

What happens in CityVille stays in CityVille—or so social game maker Zynga (ZNGA) hopes. The San Francisco company and its rivals have long used social networks to sell virtual goods for real profit.

Now Zynga wants to bring Sin City-style wagering to the online masses. “It’s a natural fit,” Chief Executive Officer Mark Pincus said at a conference in February. Gambling on social media sites “is going to be mind-blowing.”

Social gambling, a collision of real-world betting and Internet games, could soon become America’s favorite pastime. In December, the U.S. Justice Department said a 1961 federal law that many scholars believed barred all forms of online gambling applies only to Web-based sports betting. (Online casinos, though, still need a license from any state where they want to operate.) Since then, a half-dozen states, including California, Nevada, and New Jersey, have started considering online gambling legislation.

Those new laws could allow Zynga and other game publishers to add wagering and cash prizes to everything from race-car games to shoot-em-ups...

Producers of console games are considering poker and other forms of gambling as a new source of revenue to offset declining sales of games for machines such as the Xbox, Wii, and PlayStation. Electronic Arts, the maker of Madden NFL, Medal of Honor, and dozens of other games, in March announced a two-year deal for rights to the World Series of Poker brand for online and mobile games.

The Gambling Commission government watchdog will undertake an investigation into the rise of social gaming with a view to determining whether this sector of the market needs to be better regulated.

According to a report from the Daily Mail newspaper, social gaming has largely avoided the attention of UK regulators as games are usually played for free and as such have been viewed as not real gambling.

However, participants still wager in hopes of winning points or virtual prizes and it is possible to spend large sums of money buying extra chips and points with the publication reporting that one player in the United States recently spent $13,000 in just three months on free-to-play games. In addition, some operators allow customers to cash in their winnings and a black market has since sprung up in which people can buy and sell their virtual takings.

“The key question is; is it gambling or not,” read a quote in the Daily Mail attributed to John Travers, Corporate Affairs Manager for the Gambling Commission.

Social gaming is worth billions of dollars to operators such as Facebook, where users can be as young as 13. Last month saw London-listed bwin.party Digital Entertainment announce that it intends to invest £32 million into the sector.

Japanese authorities officially declared ‘kompu gacha’ social games illegal on Friday. The Daily Yomiuri, which broke the news earlier this month that the Consumer Affairs Agency was studying the virtual-card-collecting games, reported that the authorities had determined the games employed a banned sales method known as ‘cards combination’. A kompu gacha ban takes effect July 1, but Japan’s leading social game firms have already announced they would stop offering the games by the end of May.

Stateside, shares in social game company Zynga took a beating on the day Facebook shares made their Nasdaq debut. After all the IPO hype, Facebook shares closed up a meager 1% from their $38 opening price – and even that reportedly required substantial share purchases by underwriters late in the day – but Zynga fell 13% to $7.16. The shares were down 20% at one point, and trading was halted twice, although part of that involved the Nasdaq system itself buckling under the strain of all that underwriter face-saving activity.

Stateside, shares in social game company Zynga took a beating on the day Facebook shares made their Nasdaq debut. After all the IPO hype, Facebook shares closed up a meager 1% from their $38 opening price – and even that reportedly required substantial share purchases by underwriters late in the day – but Zynga fell 13% to $7.16. The shares were down 20% at one point, and trading was halted twice, although part of that involved the Nasdaq system itself buckling under the strain of all that underwriter face-saving activity.

BBC NewsWilliam Hill and Sportingbet agree takeover termsBBC NewsGVC, which provides business services to the gambling and betting markets, also said that it was waiting for certain historic financial information in relation to parts of Sportingbet's...

Sports betting accounts for 76 per cent of all mobile gamblingMobile EntertainmentSports betting accounts for 76 per cent of all mobile gambling. Daniel Gumble. by Daniel Gumble Thursday, November 8th 2012 at 1:09PM.

Experts have predicted that the share of mobile casinos will reach at least 3 per cent of the interactive casino market in 2013, with some of the more optimistic amongst them suggesting 12.9 per cent. Meanwhile, mobile casinos will account for 0.9 per cent in the total global casino market in the same period.

well what did we tell you and you didn't listen ! the clock is ticking and you've still got time,grab your slice of the action and grab your place in the Google android and Apple store markets.

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One of the blue-sky opportunities that Zynga is exploring is to begin offering real money games in addition to its play money games. Essentially, the firm could take some of its existing games like poker, slots, bingo, and/or blackjack and give the user the opportunity to wager real money for real payouts-basically an online casino. As online gambling is already legal in parts of Europe, you can expect that area to be the first geography the firm focuses on. And while online gambling is currently illegal in the US, there has been some discussion of legalizing it (at least on a state-by-state basis).

There is a fair amount of risk that comes with entering a highly regulated business. In highly regulated businesses, there is a dramatically higher likelihood that the firm could be fined significant amounts of money or face civil and criminal charges for any violations. While partnering with established players in this business could mitigate some of this risk, a partnership will also decrease the size of the opportunity. Additionally, there is also the risk of an image problem. Gambling firms are seen as aiding a vice and if this reflects poorly on Zynga it may hurt their existing business. None of these risks are insurmountable, but should be considered carefully.

Bottom-Line: The non-US real money gaming opportunity is likely smaller than many people realize and the US gaming opportunity,while potentially large, far from a slam dunk.

The questions then become how big are these markets, how difficult are they to enter, and what percentage market share can Zynga realistically hope to take. To answer the first question, H2 Gambling Capital estimates that the online poker gaming market (excluding the US) was €2.9b in 2011 and H2 estimates that this market will grow at a 6% CAGR rate through 2015 (€3.6b). To answer the second question on difficulty of enter these markets, we need to examine the regulatory environment. The regulatory environment across Europe is very fragmented with each country having its own regulation and restrictions.

Chris Bell, Chairman of Bet Butler, added: “We’re delighted to offer the fans of so many clubs a service that benefits both the clubs and their supporters. It is a marvellous endorsement of our unique technology which will offer the fans consistently better odds, but also deliver an important revenue stream for their club at the click of a button.”

The company has recently acquired a handful of iPhone developers and one studio, Area/Code, which has built so-called real-world games that take place beyond any tech giant's walled garden. The hope is that these firms will help give Zynga access to markets outside Facebook's reach

888 Poker has begun talking with Facebook, the social media giant, to bring “real money” online poker to jurisdictions where such activity is permitted, a la Great Britain, according to a report on eGaming Review.

Facebook earlier in the month launched its first “real money” online gaming venture in the form of what looked like a kid’s bingo site. Bingo & Slots Friendzy, developed by Gamesys, is only available to those living within the United Kingdom at this time.

888 Poker is currently ranked as the 4th most trafficked Web cardroom in the world

Facebook earlier in the month launched its first “real money” online gaming venture in the form of what looked like a kid’s bingo site. Bingo & Slots Friendzy, developed by Gamesys, is only available to those living within the United Kingdom at this time

The "Freemium" business model is based on companies offering their basic services for free while charging a premium for advanced features. With a lack of available comparison sets, Freemium startups often do not know how they’re really performing, and they sometimes aren’t sure how to measure their performance.

Despite the privatization of OPAP, it still remains a big issue for greek government which is the legal context of online gaming in Greece. OPAP used to have the monopoly of the gambling market in Greece and now it has to face the tough challenge to compete these huge companies. There is also a big disadvantage for the greek company which is the lack of technology as there isn't any online platform for the customers. The market is still uncertain in Greece which is one of the most profitable countries in gambling sector of Europe and it needed patience until the things get clear.

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